Spent, or misspent most of the afternoon trying to set
up a Yahoo freebie website that went well until I tried to
upload a file to it and caused my little iMac to freeze.
Restarted and went through the same drill several
times with the same results‧' f r e e z e and r e s t a r t.
Talk about the frustrum of a cone, which is nothing
compared to the frustrum of a conehead like me.

I couldn't even find a delete button to dispose of the
wreckage which is probably floating around on a server
somewhere as an electronic Sargasso Sea crowded
with abandoned and broken websites.

I wanted to put up several files with sketches and
descriptions of notions I've come up with over the years
but wasn't able to do this today. Meanwhile anybody
that would like to see sketches, etc. of an "improved
Lego brick" with a positive attachment feature and
several versions of a gearmotor based on the motion of
a wobbling coin can either ask for a file that could be
sent as an e-mail attachment, or sign onto of beam
robotics at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/beam/ in
order to go to the files section for one titled buglegz.pdf
with stuff about a mechanism cobbled together from a
"Swedish wheel" and a smiley face for generation of a
"D" shaped path to drive various pantograph linkages
for articulated legs that could be driven by a reversible
gearmotor. Two reversible gearmotors could drive four,
six, eight or more legs per side.

There is also a "leg path generation.jpg" schematic that
was added as an after thought: and a "good
vibrations.pdf" that's mostly about stuff batted back and
forth by David Pearce, a piezoelectrics whizz kid who
was a research scientist at University of Birmingham
when the exchange began and a product development
guy at 1Limited, a development and licensing company
until David decided to leave and pursue another career.
Some of the helimorph-based products David helped
develop will eventually become stuff that can be picked
over for the construction of piezo-junkbots.

Meanwhile, I hope somebody will develop a small
driver for Elliptec resonating motors that could be used
in kits based on the use of improved Lego brick things
described in a file with sketches and descriptions of
wobbler gearmotors with the title "wobblers.pdf"
There's also stuff about an articulated arm that could be
driven by three gearmotors, servos or hydraulic rotary
actuators and some other stuff that somebody might
have a use for.

I tried to stir up interest amongst the beamsters in
notions for hotbotics devices based on equipping little
metal "pop-pop" boats with servos for rudder control.
These little boats sold for a buck or less before WW2
when I was still a kid, but seem to have disappeared
during the war, or shortly afterwards.

There are still a few shops in India and China that
make them and several dealers in the US and
elsewhere that peddle them if anybody wants to buy
one. One possibility would be to use a thermoelectric
generator instead of a battery. I will put some sketches
and descriptions together for anybody that is interested
in notions for little metal steamboats that might be
rigged for robotic or R/C control.